A Rural Blog that provides views & insights from a Conservative Georgia Democrat

Monday, December 30, 2013

Don't Give Up On The "OTHER" Georgia!

If liberal Georgia Democrats are serious about rebuilding the State Party and the coalitions they enjoyed during their success, they will have to figure out a way to recapture rural affections of Rural Georgians. These have been fading for some time starting in 2002 when powerful House Speaker Thomas Murphy and then gov. Roy Barnes lost re-election and that's when the Democratic Party began staking its life and its fortune on the urban vote.There was a time, of course, when rural Georgia and the Democrats were virtually the same thing. But over time, Democrats became more urbanized and rural people became Republicanized, due to the lack of a field team or "bench" of candidate to run in districts that was once held by dems for 20,30 years and that was all right with the Democrats. So long as cities were thriving and their political machines were humming, it seem possible that Georgia Democrats could win statewide elections without benefit of rural support. But as it turned out, they are 0 for 3 (2002, 2006, 2010)But a new dynamic is occuring...New demographic patterns have altered the math. With the large influx of Black, Hispanic and Young professionals moving into the state, and population shifting from Rural Ga to North G, the rural sectoe is shrinking and the Metro Area of Atlanta is growing...and growing....and growing. But despite those trends, democrats here in Georgia from the Young Democrats to Rank and file democrats are making a grave mistake in complete seceding the Gnat Line voters to the GOP because they tend to lean conservative and independent who doesn't see eye to eye with National Democrats and its increasing left-wing philosophy.Certainly liberals here in Georgia will have to show more sensitivity to rural needs than they have displayed. To begin with, they might re-examine the common assumption that rural Georgia exists solely for the convenience of city people and suburbanites, as a dispenser of rest and recreation